


all these years left unspoken

by momentofmemory



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Female Friendship, Future Fic, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Post-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-07
Updated: 2020-12-07
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:27:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27929020
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/momentofmemory/pseuds/momentofmemory
Summary: It’s been ten years since it happened. Five, since she was last here.It doesn’t feel like it.(or, Lydia Martin lost her best friend at seventeen, and the worst part is that she has so much time to figure out how to live with that.)
Relationships: Allison Argent & Lydia Martin
Comments: 12
Kudos: 16





	all these years left unspoken

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written for the fictober prompt, "Not interested, thank you."
> 
> Thanks to [LuthienKenobi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LuthienKenobi/pseuds/LuthienKenobi) for the last minute beta.

It’s been ten years since it happened. Five, since she was last here.

It doesn’t feel like it.

There might be a little more overgrowth on the fence, a little more wear and tear on the headstones. Other than that, it doesn’t look that different.

She wishes it did.

The truth is, Lydia doesn’t dream about that night anymore.

The first time she realized she hadn’t had a nightmare in weeks, that she finally felt _okay_ when she woke up in the morning, she cried for hours and missed every single class and study session she’d had lined up. It’s been like that for every milestone, which.

Well. That’s why she’s here.

Lydia steps off the path and slips through the grass, mindful of the way the wet blades cling to her ankles. It’d rained all through her drive into town last night, so she probably should have considered wearing something more suitable than a pastel dress and white ballet flats.

Instead, she sinks down into the slick mud at the foot of the gravestone without thinking twice.

She’s had worse stains before. At least this time, they’ll be brown, instead of red.

It’s quiet, except for the sound of the wind whistling through the trees. That’s the thing about graveyards: the only public place free for entry in their capitalistic hellscape, and yet no one ever wants to go.

Lydia rearranges her dress over her knees, like it matters. The letters spelling out Allison’s name dance on the gravestone, mocking, laughing. Lydia knows it’s just the refraction of light against the water in her eyes.

She blinks it away and clears her throat.

“Hey.”

It feels as stupid as it did the day they lost her, and the gravestone stares reproachfully up at the self-recrimination locked in her throat. Irrationally, Lydia thinks about the twelve-step program her mother signed her up for, but she never visited.

_Hi, my name is Lydia._

_(Hi, Lydia.)_

_My last visit was over fifteen hundred days ago. I haven’t come to see you because I’ve had to live my life, and my therapist says my life isn’t here. Because my life isn’t a body in a graveyard, gone too young, because you_ _managed to save_ _me and I couldn’t—_

“I guess you should know the pack’s doing well,” she tries, speaking new thoughts into existence because it makes it easier to hide from the ones clamoring in her head. “Stiles finished up his forensics degree, and he’s applying to FBI, proper, now. Malia’s still Malia. Scott’s finally kicking ass in vet school instead of, you know, kicking actual ass. Or werewolf. Still haven’t come across any wereasses.”

She runs out of words, so her voice trails off. She licks her lips in search of more.

“You know your dad dated Mrs. McCall, right?” It’s a non sequitur, and Lydia snorts at her own expense. “One last crack at getting the McCall and Argent lines to mix, I guess.”

She’s honestly not sure how Allison would’ve reacted to that, if she’d still been here. Probably not well. Then again, it probably wouldn’t have happened at all if she and Scott had—

“You made it hard for him, you know.” She picks at a nail, applying just enough pressure to relieve the ache in her chest without actually breaking the keratin. “It’s hard to move on from someone when their last words were that they love you.”

More silence.

Time’s supposed to make this easier, but the truth is, time just makes it hurt differently. Just makes it that much clearer that seventeen years old was _seventeen years old._

“I’m sorry,” she blurts out, then immediately curses herself.

She’d promised she wouldn’t go there again.

She can add it to the long list of things she’s broken.

The leather straps on her bag slip off her shoulder, and she tugs it down onto her lap. Not ready to open it up quite yet.

“You’d probably say it’s not my fault, if you were here. Or that this is what you chose.” Lydia pauses, angrily wiping at her eyes. She sucks in a shuddering breath. “But that’s bullshit, and I’m not interested, thank you.”

She knows all the lines they’d told themselves when it happened. All the ones Allison herself probably believed.

They’re a lot harder to stomach now that she’s twenty-seven and Allison’s still seventeen, and that gap is just going to get wider, and wider, and wider.

Lydia swallows. “I just wanted to tell you—I mean, it’s just—”

She digs her fingernails into her skin, eight perfect crescent moons, and starts over, because she came here for a reason.

“I haven’t told you about me yet,” she says, and the graveyard is quiet.

It’s okay, though. Allison would’ve gotten quiet if she’d said that when she were still around, too. Allison was always good at listening.

Lydia hesitates a second longer, then pulls a white envelope out of her bag, the seal already broken. She runs the edges across the pads of her fingers.

“I got in,” she says.

The tears come back.

“The PhD program at MIT accepted me over the weekend, and I know I still need to actually do the work, and there’ll be research, and a defense, but—I got _in_ , Allison.”

Lydia breathes sharply past her constricting throat, tight from holding back tears instead of a scream. She leans over to set the envelope against the grey headstone, and her hands curl in the mud, sinking just a little deeper.

The first day after losing Allison was hell on earth. Every day after that has been a slow, dogged attempt to bring a bit of earth into hell.

Go to the mall.

Cry.

Kiss a cute boy.

Cry.

Go to college.

Cry.

Get a new best friend.

Cry harder than all the previous ones combined.

But Lydia’s done them all the same, because she has to. And because once the crying is over, she’s not left alone.

“I never said it,” she says, the words tripping over themselves in her haste to get them out. “I never said it, but it wasn’t Stiles. Not just him. He noticed I was smart, but you’re the one that showed me that it was _okay_. To be brave and beautiful and smart and afraid all at the same time.”

( _You’re also the one that showed me how_ young _we were, because we shouldn’t have had to be all that to begin with._ )

Lydia reaches out and her fingers ghost over the carved letters, hearing the echo of her own scream in their crevices.

“I guess, I just wanted to say—”

Lydia pulls back and tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, flailing for words in a way she hasn’t since she was a teenager.

It makes sense, she supposes, seeing as she’s talking to one.

“…Thank you,” she says. “And I miss you.”

_(I love you.)_

**Author's Note:**

> come scream with me either in the comments or on [tumblr](https://momentofmemory.tumblr.com/). 💜


End file.
